Data Expert Is Cautious About Misuse of Information

As the government gears up its domestic security program, the chief executive of a venture capital firm founded by the Central Intelligence Agency warned today of the danger of amassing a large, unified database that would be available to government investigators — as some technology executives have advocated. “I think it’s very dangerous to give the government total access,” said Gilman Louie, chief executive of In-Q-Tel, a venture fund established by the C.I.A. in 1999. Besides, the real lesson learned from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Mr. Louie said, was that the intelligence failure was not so much that the government had too little information but that the information held by different government agencies was not linked, shared and analyzed. It is already clear that a part of the vast amounts of personal and commercial data housed in government and corporation will increasingly be used in terrorist-related government investigations. But there is a vigorous debate over what data should be collected and how it should be used to balance the interests of national security with personal privacy and individual freedom. Full Story

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